Excerpt: President Obama’s recent call for comprehensive immigration reform and its echo in more recent Senate hearings is really not reform at all. All the back and forth in Washington largely misses the point that America’s immigration system is upside down. No better example of this topsy-turvy failure is its immigration courts. In the words of their frustrated judges, they are 'play courts.' In reality, they are courts that are built to fail.

Since 2008, unexecuted deportation orders have increased from 558,000 to 1.1 million. From 1996 through 2009, 40 percent of all aliens the U.S. allowed to remain free pending trial—770,000 out of 1.9 million—vanished before their hearings. In the five years following 9/11, 50 percent of all aliens outside custody disappeared. Immigration courts are helpless to reverse this. Courts are impotent—so feeble, in fact, that they cannot enforce their own orders. And the Justice Department-the flagship agency which manages the courts-never reported any of this.

Excerpt: The Texas cities of Mission and El Paso are experiencing a population and business boom, as thousands of Mexicans flee violence in the border states of Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, and Chihuahua, according to a story in yesterday's Mexico City daily Reforma.

The newspaper reports that many of the newcomers arrive with investor visas, which the United States provides to persons who bring job-creating investments with them. My colleague David North has written frequently about the EB-5 investor program; for his blogs postings on it, see here.

Excerpt: One of the current immigration mysteries has been: why have so few Haitian illegal aliens in the U.S. accepted the government's offer of Temporary Protected Status, a quasi-amnesty?

After the earthquake of January 2010 the Department of Homeland Security offered TPS to all Haitians who were in the U.S. legally or illegally on the date of the quake. It expected some 100,000 to 150,000 or so to register.

TPS offers, among other things, the right to work legally in the U.S. For a USCIS fact sheet on the program see here.

Excerpt: The story of illegal alien fraudster and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas continues to unfold and he is finally beginning to feel the repercussions of his unlawful activity. While there remain many unpunished illegal acts perpetrated by a number of individuals in the Vargas saga (including violations of employment law by Peter Perl, the assistant managing editor of the Washington Post), this week the State of Washington may have set the ball in motion by canceling Vargas's fraudulently obtained driver's license. According to the Seattle Times, state licensing officials launched an investigation after Vargas's admission of multiple legal violations became public, and determined that he was never a resident of the state. In other words, he lied on the application forms. In his article in the New York Times, Vargas explained:

Excerpt: Perhaps the least attractive henchman of imperial publisher Rupert Murdoch (and there is fierce competition for that distinction) got into the U.S. on an H-1B visa, lost the job that got him the visa, and, apparently, has not left the U.S. as he should have done.

I am grateful to Ben Smith of Politico for breaking the story. It all ties into the huge controversy in the U.K. about Murdoch's media empire, and the serial wiretapping of the phones of murder victims and the royal family by his reporters.

Excerpt: Both images of the EB-5 immigrant investor program emerging from recent DHS documents are misleading.

One, the widely publicized statement yesterday by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano was that the agency had 'outlined a series of policy, operational, and outreach efforts to fuel the nation's economy and stimulate investment [to] . . . create jobs . . .'

The other, a totally ignored ruling by a DHS appeals panel, indicated that in one immigrant investor case jobs were created, all right, but 16 of 17 of them went to illegal aliens. (I will return to the specifics of this South Dakota case shortly.)

Excerpt: I just finished reading a snarky little blog a friend forwarded me for review. The blog, 'Report Reveals Basic Misunderstanding of Deportation Process,' by Ben Winograd, purports to be a critique of my recent backgrounder on removal proceedings.

I'll try not to respond to the peculiar and vituperative nature of Mr. Winograd's blog other than to observe that it is continuing proof of the incivility in today's public discourse. Nor will I attempt to respond to all of his assertions, because many don't merit response.

Excerpt: The only thing that irks the administration more than one underused immigration program is having two such programs.

So today the Obama administration took several steps to still further ease the rules in the H-1B program for high-tech nonimmigrant workers, and the EB-5 program for alien investors, as the Wall Street Journal reported under this headline: 'U.S. to Assist Immigrant Job Creators'.

Excerpt: It would be nice if, once in a while, open-borders zealots would fight fair. But, once again, they're cynically and willfully out to deprive American citizens of the ability to exercise self-government.

The open-borders activist group Casa of Maryland has filed suit against a petition drive to put the state's DREAM Act on the ballot next year. The state legislature passed the bill, then a grassroots opposition movement arose and followed the next step in the state's procedure: put the question to voters.

Excerpt: Infosys, the big Indian body shop and extensive user of the H-1B program, has, in effect, lost an age-discrimination case in federal court, but everything about the case is shrouded in secrecy.

It is one of those settled-out-of-court arrangements where Infosys must have paid a sum of money to the U.S. citizen against whom it discriminated, but part of the agreement is that the details of the settlement must remain a secret. The little guy gets some money, which is good, but the big guy's operations remain a closed book. It is frustrating to onlookers.

Excerpt: In his syndicated column last week, Univision anchorman Jorge Ramos wrote about the fundamental importance of credibility in journalism. Credibility, he said, is a journalist's job: 'If a journalist can't be believed, his work isn't worth anything.'

Ramos's concern for professional ethics and truth-telling adds a touch of irony to his claim – made on the air and in another column – that President Obama has broken a promise to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, aka NALEO.

About Me

I am an Alexander Technique teacher in Beverly Hills (Alexander90210.com). I have five books available on Amazon.com. I've been blogging since 1997. I was born in Kurri Kurri, Australia, on May 28, 1966. I have lived in California since May 1977.